scholarly journals Law for Computer Scientists and Other Folk

Author(s):  
Mireille Hildebrandt

This book introduces law to computer scientists. Computer scientists develop, protect, and maintain computing systems in the broad sense of that term, whether hardware, software, or data. They may be focused on e.g. digital security, or on embedded systems, or on software science. The aim of this book is to convey the internal logic of legal practice, firmly grounded in legal theory. It attempts to bridge the gap between two scientific practices, and probe the middle ground to present a reasonably coherent picture of the grammar and vocabulary of law and the rule of law. This attempt is geared toward those with no wish to become lawyers but who are nevertheless forced to consider the salience of legal rights and obligations. Simultaneously, this book aims to help lawyers to review their own trade. It is a volume on law in an onlife world, presenting a coherent picture of how modern law operates, how it emerged in the context of printed text, and how it confronts its new, data-driven environment.

Author(s):  
Kim Economides

This paper questions some basic assumptions of legal theory, education and practice from the perspective of rural, remote and regional (RRR) legal communities beyond the metropolis. Legal ideologies and values fundamental to the legitimacy of the modern state, such as the Rule of Law, are embedded in most law curricula and reinforced at every stage of the educational continuum, and commonly assert that law, legal rights and access to courts of law apply equally regardless of physical location or social status. Despite this, indigenous and other excluded groups living in peripheral communities frequently experience law differently from their urban counterparts, as do legal professionals living and working outside the city. The key issue examined concerns how centre-periphery tension should best be managed in the future regulation of law and lawyers. What kind of policies and strategies may genuinely assist social inclusion and to what extent should law and legal practice accommodate diversity? How and to what extent should lawyers and para-legals represent the interests of communities rather than private individuals in RRR areas of Australia? What kind of training and technological support do they require? The paper aims to set out some choices that confront policymakers while drawing upon international experience that may offer some guidance.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mireille Hildebrandt

This chapter confronts the foundational challenges posed to legal theory and legal philosophy by the surge of computational law. Two types of computational law are at stake. On the one hand we have artificial intelligence in the legal realm that will be addressed as data-driven law, and on the other hand we have the coding of self-executing contracts and regulation in the blockchain, as well as other types of automated decision making (ADM), addressed as code-driven law. Data-driven law raises problems due to its autonomic operations and the ensuing opacity of its reasoning. Code-driven law presents us with a conflation of regulation, execution and adjudication. Though such implications are very different, both types of computational law share assumptions based on the calculability and computability of legal practice and legal research. Facing the assumptions and implications of data- and code-driven law the chapter will first investigate the affordances of current, text-driven law, and relate some of the core tenets of the Rule of Law to those affordances. This will lead to an enquiry into three questions that informed this chapter: do code- and data-driven law transform the mode of existence of modern positive law, and if so how? do these new legal tools affect the checks and balances of the rule of law, and if so how? and, do they uproot legal protection, and if so how?


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kinnari Bhatt

AbstractOne way of understanding the exile of the Chagos Islanders and their inability to return to their ancestral land is through a reading of the case from a perspective of post-colonial legal scholarship. Chagossians have strong legal rights to land and remedies of compensation and return through a purposive application of the international legal definition of Indigenous, Magna Carta right to abode and international human rights law that could address their dispossession. Yet, the inability of those rights to be meaningfully applied has been constrained because of the post-colonial way they are legally interpreted, creating a legal vacuum in which basic fairness and substantive equality have been routinely compromised. Drawing attention to the continued legal denial of return in the context of decolonisation, ongoing colonialism and the rule of law makes sense of the legal record and explains the expulsion of the islanders despite the moral merits of return.


Balcanica ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 399-434
Author(s):  
Vojislav Stanovcic

The papers discusses the views of Slobodan Jovanovic (1869-1958) on several phenomena of Serbia?s political and institutional development in the hundred years between the First Serbian Uprising in 1804 and the fall of the Obrenovic dynasty in 1903, and on different political systems, looking at the sources on which his thought drew upon, the ideas he was guided by and the theoretical framework of his legal and socio-political thinking. His major work, a legal theory of the state, as most of his other writings, was his own contribution to what he held to be a national mission, the building of a modern state based on the rule of law.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 371
Author(s):  
Marthen Arie

The applicable law (as a result of legislation) is not always a reflection of the society concerned. Local regulations in the area were impressed into law to be “forced” because it does not conform to the spirit and characteristics of the society. The formation of local regulation is increasingly complex and complicated when the process and its substance beside cannot be separated from the political process, it is also cannot be separated from social processes. The problematic of local regulation formation is indicated by the fact that the authorized institution to arrange the local regulation is still not sufficient to produce products of high quality local laws. Legisprudence theory may open new perspectives on the validity of norm or legitimacy of norm and by course using this approach the quality of local regulations will be more qualified. Although a political approach is more into the heart in the legislative process but legislation and regulation can be an important object. Legal theory is not only a basis on enforcement or implementation of the rule of law, but it is very useful theory in law-making.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Ilyas ◽  
Dicky Eko Prasetio ◽  
Felix Ferdin Bakker

Abstract This study aims to analyze the application of morality to legal practice in Indonesia. This is because the reality of the rule of law today is dominated by a positivist-legalistic phenomenon that prioritizes text but darkens morality's meaning in law. Morality in law seems to be immersed in legal practice that deifies the textual law but neglects the law's moral essence. This research is juridical-normative research oriented towards coherence between the principles of law based on morality and legal norms and legal practice in society. This research's novelty is the development of morality in the rule of law practice by prioritizing two aspects, namely the integrative mechanism aspect of Harry C. Bredemeier with the progressive law of Satjipto Rahardjo. This study emphasizes that efforts to develop law must not forget the elements of morality development. This study's conclusions highlight that the development of law and morality will run optimally by upholding the law as an integrative mechanism and applying progressive law as a solution in facing the lethargy of the Indonesian nation.Keywords: integrative mechanism; morality; progressive lawAbstrak Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis penerapan moralitas pada praktik berhukum di Indonesia. Hal ini dikarenakan bahwa realitas praktik berhukum saat ini didominasi oleh fenomena positivistik-legalistik yang mengutamakan teks tetapi menggelapkan makna moralitas dalam berhukum. Aspek moralitas dalam hukum seakan tenggelam dalam praktik hukum yang mendewakan tekstual undang-undang tetapi melalaikan esensi moral dalam undang-undang. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian yuridis-normatif yang berorientasi pada koherensi antara asas-asas hukum yang bersumber pada moralitas dengan norma hukum serta praktik hukum di masyarakat. Kebaruan dari penelitian ini yaitu pembangunan moralitas dalam praktik negara hukum dengan mengedepankan dua aspek, yaitu aspek integrative mechanism dari Harry C. Bredemeier dengan hukum progresif dari Satjipto Rahardjo. Hasil dari penelitian ini menegaskan bahwa upaya membangun hukum tidak boleh melupakan aspek pembangunan moralitas. Simpulan dalam penelitian ini menegaskan bahwa, pembangunan hukum dan moralitas akan berjalan secara optimal dengan meneguhkan hukum sebagai integrative mechanism serta menerapkan hukum progresif sebagai solusi dalam menghadapi jagat kelesuan berhukum bangsa Indonesia.


Legal Theory ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-152
Author(s):  
Alex Silk

ABSTRACTIt is common to think that what theory of linguistic vagueness is correct has implications for debates in philosophy of law. I disagree. I argue that the implications of particular theories of vagueness on substantive issues of legal theory and practice are less far-reaching than often thought. I focus on four putative implications discussed in the literature concerning (i) the value of vagueness in the law, (ii) the possibility and value of legal indeterminacy, (iii) the possibility of the rule of law, and (iv) strong discretion. I conclude with some methodological remarks. Delineating questions about conventional meaning, legal content determination, and norms of legal interpretation and judicial practice can motivate clearer answers and a more refined understanding of the space of overall theories of vagueness, interpretation, and law.


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 248-267
Author(s):  
Sławomir Tkacz

The present paper aims to present an outline of the views of the Polish legal theorist Józef Nowacki (1923–2005). The claim put forward is that Nowacki was the chief representative of Hans Kelsen’s normativism in Polish legal theory. The paper begins with a short historical sketch presenting the reception of Hans Kelsen’s views in Polish jurisprudence, noting that in the post-war period the communist authorities believed that normativism was at odds with the then prevailing system of actually existing socialism. Drawing inspiration from German-speaking authors, Nowacki rejected the ideology prevailing in Poland at that time and became a staunch advocate of the normativist stance, in particular with regard to the theory of the legal system. The second part of the paper discusses Nowacki’s views regarding the concept of the rule of law, and the third and last part presents Nowacki’s critique of the case-law of the Polish Constitutional Court.


Author(s):  
Mireille Hildebrandt

In this brief contribution, I distinguish between code-driven and data-driven regulation as novel instantiations of legal regulation. Before moving deeper into data-driven regulation, I explain the difference between law and regulation, and the relevance of such a difference for the rule of law. I discuss artificial legal intelligence (ALI) as a means to enable quantified legal prediction and argumentation mining which are both based on machine learning. This raises the question of whether the implementation of such technologies should count as law or as regulation, and what this means for their further development. Finally, I propose the concept of ‘agonistic machine learning’ as a means to bring data-driven regulation under the rule of law. This entails obligating developers, lawyers and those subject to the decisions of ALI to re-introduce adversarial interrogation at the level of its computational architecture. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The growing ubiquity of algorithms in society: implications, impacts and innovations'.


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